


The kind we dream of

by sugarboat



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, Minor Injuries, Not canon compliant (potentially), Pining, Pre-Series, Reeducation (implied), Teenagers, Time Skips, inspiring feelings of existential dread in the guy you love, public intoxication, scouting
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-05
Updated: 2017-07-18
Packaged: 2018-10-14 23:55:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 7,463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10546514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sugarboat/pseuds/sugarboat
Summary: There are certain things Earl remembers, that he knows Cecil doesn’t.A series of loosely interconnected vignettes, that, arranged in a certain way, tell a story. A story about you. A story about me. A story aboutus.





	1. You're always talking but you're not playing

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, I'm only 60-ish episodes in, so this could very well be jossed already by current canon!

There are certain things Earl remembers, that he knows Cecil doesn’t.

One of these is the way Cecil’s lips look after getting sucker punched. Split and swollen, a steady stream of blood and spit dribbling out. Red, cracked. It only accentuates their natural pout, and their owner’s natural inclination to use them to sulk. He’s doing so now, worrying the wound with his straight, white teeth and sniffling dramatically at precisely timed intervals. Earl shakes his head and wets the cream-colored terrycloth towel in his hand again. He presses it up against Cecil’s lips and savors the quiet hiss that whispers out, hot against his palm.

“I told-”

“Told ya so?” Cecil finishes for him, voice muffled around the washcloth still pressed against his mouth. It comes out slurred too, like Cecil is being careful, cognizant for the first time of how his tongue and teeth scrape along the inside of his mouth on every word.

“No- well, yeah, I did, but that wasn’t it,” Earl replies, and uses his free hand to pinch Cecil’s cheek. It causes him to wrinkle his face up in faux displeasure and leaves a smudge of red on his cool, pale skin. “I told you Steve was gonna punch you if you kept on like that.”

“ _Ugh_ ,” Cecil says, as if that is explanation enough. It probably is, for Cecil. “He needs to learn when to keep his big trap shut.” 

Earl snorts and pulls the cloth away. Cleaned up, it doesn’t look as bad, but bright red blood has trickled out from ragged gash in Cecil’s bottom lip, branched out like the roots of trees into the fine creases of his lip. Earl lifts up his free hand, the one not holding the increasingly stained rag, and takes hold of Cecil’s chin. He swipes his thumb along Cecil’s bloodied lip, presses down hard in the center, digs his blunt nail in, just a little. He does it again when Cecil sucks in a quick, shuddery breath around his thumb. 

“You’re the one with the fat lip here, Cecil,” Earl says. Cecil is staring at him, and his tongue comes out to lick at the coppery, metallic liquid still oozing sullenly out of his lip. His tongue licks against Earl’s thumb before the other boy jerks his hand away like he’s been burned.

“Yeah, well…” Cecil says. His eyes are downcast now. “What badge do I get for _that_?”

Earl rolls his eyes, and is about to say that there isn’t a badge for getting rightfully bopped in the face, but he checks the Scouts’ Book of Accomplishments index just to be thorough – and because Cecil will make him look anyway, probably multiple times until they find a vague enough entry that Cecil can wriggle his way into saying applies – and there it is. 

“Hey, there actually _is_ one here!” 

“Oh? What? Let me see!” Cecil crowds into his space, lanky limbs and cool skin that don’t ever show the barest hints of sunburn, and never the untamed spattering of freckles that Earl himself sports. Cecil, pale and excitable like a moon drenched lake, who never looks like he belongs smeared with dirt and blood.

Grinning, Earl can feel the tightness of his own sun kissed cheeks. He prods the intersection of a row and a column, a single, purposeful point. A fuzzy and nondescript black and white color badge, and a title printed neatly at its side. Cecil squints and leans forward, and Earl eyes the column of his neck. The drying line of thick blood over his chin. 

“ _Just desserts from a just desert_?” Cecil reads aloud, and then he straightens. Cranes his neck to gaze at Earl head on, chest canted towards him. They’re sitting on a wide, flat rock that’s been sopping up heat all afternoon, which is why Earl feels so warm and fuzzy. The rock is same matte brown as the rest of the desert, its only distinguishing feature being its relative height. “I thought that was one for, eating a bunch of ice cream? Or something.”

“Dutifully getting what’s coming to you,” Earl corrects, his lips twisting as he tries for a serious countenance. Cecil’s jaw drops and his eyes widen, the very picture of scandalized outrage. It’s enough to send Earl into fits of giggles, which Cecil seems to take as a personalized affront to his person, as after a huff the boy launches himself at Earl, and sends them both tumbling backwards into loose, coarse desert. 

They wrestle, briefly, tossing each other back and forth with hurried, meaningless jeers. But Cecil’s good at subterfuge and subversion and, Earl guesses, probably anything that starts with a _sub_. And Earl’s good at being a scout. He lets them struggle for a while, racking up points towards the heat death of the universe, but Earl imagines that the stasis of the desert can make up for a little bit of racket every now and then. Their scuffle kicks up loose puffs of dust and sand that linger in the air.

When it’s over, Cecil’s on his back, chest heaving up and down and eyes all glittery with mirth. Earl’s got one hand cinched around both his slender wrists and he’s crouching over him, knees bracketing Cecil’s hips. Cecil smiles with his bloodied teeth, with dirt and grit sticking to the wet curve of his lip. Earl revises his earlier appraisal – Cecil looks as good as home, scuffed up and eager. 

“Do you really think I got what was coming to me?” Cecil asks. He licks his lips then pulls a face, and turns to side to spit. “Blegh.” 

“Nah,” Earl says, and he wants to lean, and he thinks Cecil wants him to, too, but he stands up instead, and brushes off his clothes. The plastic container he’d filled with water got spilled in their scuffle, and lies toppled next to the dark patch of its contents seeping into the sand. “You still got plenty coming, Cecil.” 

He holds out his hand and Cecil grasps it. Earl yanks him to his feet. Cecil doesn’t let go, stays half a hand’s length too close.

“I think so too.”


	2. Are you afraid when I look your way

There are certain things Earl knows by heart, that he’s sure Cecil has forgotten. 

Like the scout’s pledge. Perhaps the shape of it, the feel of it in his mouth – perhaps that lingers somewhere in the back of Cecil’s mind, like the stirring of an empty house, or the cool tunnels of petrification that radiate off the dog park. The idea gets planted in Earl’s mind. That’s why he’s falling down drunk, and verbally stumbling his way through an oath that has no right being as old as it is.

“O-on bladed beams and night’s- no, knife’s- knife’s edge,” Earl slurs into Cecil’s shoulder. The radio host is a solid presence at his side. A good thing he is, because Earl is leaning his weight onto him almost entirely. Cecil has an arm wrapped around his waist, and Earl has an arm slung across Cecil’s shoulders.

“Yes, yes, it’s all very ostentatious,” Cecil agrees. Earl misses a step, threatening to topple them both. Survival training in the sand wastes has only filled him out even more as time marched strangely, elongatedly onwards. The daily threats of city living have only thinned Cecil more, into lean and supple lines that, Earl thinks, complement his own. Cecil splays his free hand across Earl’s chest. Their movement stops as Cecil braces his legs, anchors them solidly to the ground beneath the yawning, spinning void.

“I stand in front of the pious sand,” he recites. Cecil raises an eyebrow. “A bulwark against the hateful sun.” Cecil’s hand on his chest lifts and then gives him a couple encouraging pats.

“Rehearsing for the next induction ceremony? Admirable, but is this the best timing…?” Under his arm, Cecil rolls his weight across his shoulders, hefting him back up with a grunt. They stagger onwards, both quiet for different reasons. Cecil straining, trying to remember _where_ the scoutmaster lives and Earl sullen as his brain shuffles the long lines of the pledge backwards and forth, with no particular order.

“Cecil,” Earl states abruptly, and digs his feet in so they are jarred to a stop. He maneuvers them easily, Cecil yielding to his lead like always. Like past always. “Ceec.” Earl plants a heavy hand on each of Cecil’s shoulders, crumpling the delicate fabric of his shirt. “It’s important.”

Cecil’s hands are on his hips, cold like he has dripped down from the blackness of the night. They are perfunctory, stabilizing. There is none of the clawing, scrambling, scratching in his hands, except in the ghost of Earl’s memory. Just a quiet, distant weight, a curious tilt of his head. His eyes, Earl thinks, his eyes are different. They gleam in the crisp gloom of the evening, lit like the moon with borrowed light.

“Yes, I understand, _very_ important business,” Cecil says. “I have nothing but the utmost respect for your work, Scoutmaster.” Earl draws his hands inward, so his thumbs can press along the slender column of Cecil’s pale throat. 

“Is that _all_ , Cecil?” Earl wants to shake him. He bites his lip, and his gaze drops to a silvery line on Cecil’s bottom lip, all but invisible. Unconscious mimicry, striving to put them both on even footing, Cecil swipes his tongue over his lip. His tongue looks wet and pink and shiny. The night is cold, Cecil is cold, and Earl feels something hot and tarlike bubbling in his chest. 

“Earl,” Cecil says, softly and severely. Earl’s heart gives a pitiful leap during the pregnant pause Cecil leaves hanging between them. “Where is your apartment?”

They stumble onwards in the night. Now Earl notices the flush to Cecil’s face. The orator is in short sleeves, and goosebumps prickle the long expanses of his arms. Earl himself is wearing shorts that leave his slender and defined calves free to the environment, but he has long since gotten acclimated to the waxing and waning moods of the desert. It’s only Cecil’s effervescent moods that still catch him off guard, so utterly at odds with the Cecil he spent so many long years learning. 

Wasn’t there a part of the oath that Cecil liked best? Earl tries to remember as he dips his hand down. He slides his arm off Cecil’s shoulders, and brushes his fingers just over the surface of his skin, skating along the fine downy hairs of his arm, standing on end. He feels Cecil’s arm around his waist tighten. He watches the sharp shadows of Cecil’s Adam’s apple flex and morph as he swallows. 

The street lamps glow dull and sallow. A quiet snoring sound comes from one of bushes they meander past. Even with Earl preoccupied, unable to offer much more than a grunt or a shaky nod towards one street or another, they make it to his apartment complex. Cecil coaxes him up the stairs. Earl trips over his own feet, and when Cecil catches him close, he can smell poisoned roots and curdling ozone. They stand on the bristled welcome mat before his door.

“Do you have your keys? I can help you unlock the door, if you need me to,” Cecil says. Earl reaches forward and brushes a stray lock of hair behind the radio host’s ear. Cecil catches his hand against his cheek. “Sooo, that’s a yes? I need to open the door?”

“Ceec,” Earl murmurs. He savors the chance to lay his palm flat, the cool of Cecil’s skin interrupted by the delicate flush spread across his cheekbones. “We are the pale watchers, the Eye of the city.” Cecil stiffens, his brow furrowing, nigh imperceptible creases on his face. 

“We guide the unseen Hand,” Cecil says, the phrase like a well-worn psalm on his tongue. “We wait for our post eternal.” 

There’s a moment where their eyes meet, and Earl can _almost_ see him. It’s just right there, hovering out of his reach, and Earl is frozen, unsure which action might tempt Cecil closer and which might shove him further away. The silence between them unfurls like a ribbon. Earl is scared to even breathe, but he cups Cecil’s face and waits. 

Inaction being a choice of its own, the moment passes. 

Cecil’s hand drops first, and he lets out a laugh.

“Wow, the things you remember from childhood, huh? You know, sometimes I can even recall, word for word, those horrible cereal commercials! You know the ones, right? The wheat ones?” Earl’s hand slips away as well and he sighs. His fingers stroke along Cecil’s cheek as it leaves, but he doubts the man even notices.

“The ones that just devolved into chanting at the end?”

“Yes! That’s it precisely! _Wheat cannot kill you, it can only make you stronger_ ,” Cecil quotes with another laugh. The radio host is relaxed around him. Not the way one is relaxed around someone they care very much about however – Cecil is relaxed in the way one is relaxed around someone they care very little about. Not so much as to not care at all, but Earl thinks that he if were, say, swallowed into a pit for all eternity, Cecil might not lose more than a week or two’s worth of sleep over it.

And there was a time when it only took the _idea_ of being separated for a week to bring on the sleepless nights.

Earl sighs again and pats his pockets. He pats the two on the front of his shorts, and then he pats the ones on his backside. A creeping dread must have been blown along on the breeze, because it suddenly curls around the end of his spine. Earl pats at the pockets hanging forlorn and empty on the sides of his thighs. He even pats the extra secret pocket sown into his shirt. Cecil casually finds something exceedingly interesting on the ground, so as not to have Earl’s secrets revealed. 

“Cecil,” Earl says, and Cecil jerks his gaze back upwards.

“Scoutmaster,” Cecil says in kind.

“I don’t have my keys on me.”

He sleeps on Cecil’s couch that night.


	3. Find my way, away from this place

There are some things that, Earl thinks, would be easier to forget.

He remembers the dark silhouette of Cecil’s house, against the spotted backdrop of a night sky. Later, he remembers someone telling him that the stars are moving away, that everything is drifting apart, and even later, he recognizes that the night is more void than stars. But that is later. In the moment, Earl remembers that, in a town full of people who can’t sleep through a night, Cecil has gained a reputation of not sleeping.

Earl tosses stray rock after stray rock after cactus prickle at Cecil’s darkened window, until it swings open and he tosses a pebble square into Cecil’s face. It’s gratifying to see that his aim is good, even when he isn’t aiming.

“Earl?” the vague blob that must be Cecil says. Earl grins. “Uhhh… Why didn’t you just use the door?” 

His face drops. His cheeks might have literally burst into flames. A bedroom light winks on behind Cecil, spilling out into the night and illuminating the craggy rocks and sparse patches of rough grass that make up the yard. The rest of the house stays silent, and still, and empty. 

“It’s tradition,” Earl claims as he steps closer to the window sill. Cecil rests his forearms on his side of the sill and leans out. He looks neither tired nor rested, but he does smile. Earl’s stomach does quiet and enthusiastic flip flops.

“Gimme a sec,” Cecil says and dips back into his room. 

The muffled sounds of vaguely defined rummaging drift from the open window. Earl inches closer, posture snapping straight and cheeks flushing scarlet red again when he catches a glimpse of bare skin. Clearing his throat, Earl makes a sharp quarter turn, so he’s staring out at the huddled and indistinct buildings of the neighborhood. His gaze keeps flickering back to his friend, mind recreating a piecemeal layout of Cecil’s body.

Pale skin. No tan lines – how? Scars. Typical scars. Weird scars. A fresh and precisely printed scattering of starburst bruises across his back, indicative of a recent librarian encounter. Earl scrunches his nose for a moment and then remembers, _oh shit,_ there’s a book report due soon. 

It isn’t like – this isn’t the first time he’s ever seen, Cecil. They’ve been scouts together for years. But something about stealing furtive glances has Earl’s heart pounding. It beats frantically against his chest, and Earl is reminded of the time he’d caught a bird in his hands, its fragile, tremulous body twitching within the cage of his fingers. On his next sneaked peak, his gaze meets Cecil’s, and he has just enough time to register the other boy’s smirk before he’s staring deliberately ahead again, spine rigid like he’s trying to pass inspection.

There’s the dull thudding of Cecil’s boots across his wooden floors and then one tight-clad leg is dangling out the window. Cecil, practiced and capable, swings his other leg out and drops the short distance down. He’s gotten a little bit taller than Earl lately. The wide neck of his tunic displays the yawned-angle lines of his collarbones. He’s gotten a little scrawnier than Earl lately, too. 

“What’s on the agenda for tonight, Scoutmaster?” Cecil asks. He gives a blithe salute that, if given to the _real_ Scoutmaster, would have him stranded in the sand wastes for an impromptu survival training session.

“I am _not_ the Scoutmaster,” Earl grumbles, but not earnestly. He kind of likes it – Cecil calling him that – even if he doesn’t approve of the blatant disrespect for their actual Scoutmaster it carries. 

“Oh yes, you’re right – specificity and accuracy is vital under all circumstances,” Cecil says. “So then, allow me to amend my previous statement: What’s on the agenda for tonight, Senior Patrol Leader Harlan?” 

“How would you like to earn some new badges, Weird Scout Palmer?” Earl asks. He’s smirking, arms crossed over his chest, and Cecil slinks forward like some predatory animal. 

“Mmmm, there’s little I love more than earning badges under you, Senior Patrol Leader. Sir.” 

The line between teasing and everything else with Cecil is always thin and frayed. Earl turns his head to the side and coughs, to hide the shiver of _something_ that creeps its way up his spine like fingers. Which is dumb, because even if he can feel a bone-deep shiver you can’t _hear_ one. 

“Very good, Weird Scout,” he says, looking to his friend once more. “I think you’re gonna really like this one, Cecil.” 

“Of course I will,” Cecil replies sincerely. So sincerely that it sends another, less overwhelming tremor rattling up between Earl’s vertebrae. “Lead the way.” Punctuated with a gesture. 

“Shouldn’t you lock up?” Earl means it as a polite suggestion. The house except for Cecil’s room is silent, and dark, and empty. He’s still not sure if it’s something they’re meant to acknowledge. Cecil gives a shrug and swings the window shut in a very _good enough_ kind of manner.

“Good enough!” Cecil reiterates. “Anything that can open doors won’t have the patience to wait around until morning, and items stolen in the night are really the least of our worries.” He looks ominously up to the sky, but Earl knows he’s only looking at the endless crushed velvet of the void above. It’s full of stars tonight. 

Earl extends his hand and Cecil takes it without a word. 

Their drive is quiet. Earl drives slouched with one hand on the wheel. Cecil sits on the passenger side with one foot up on seat. It would bother Earl if his car wasn’t already prone to being covered in dirt from scouting. When they go over bumps in the road, the equipment in the backseat jingles and makes annoying, plastic-y squeaking sounds. On the gearshift between them, their free hands lie, Earl’s right and Cecil’s left, fingers casually laced.

They used to have to walk out here. There’s something about Cecil’s knee that catches Earl’s attention, the way Cecil hunches over to rest his chin on it as he gazes through the windows at the rugged expanse around them. Earl is taking the long way, deliberately turning onto the back road that leads to a spatial loop. The world around them is dark and quiet. The ground is indistinguishable from the sky. There’s something about Cecil’s breathing that catches Earl’s attention, measured and calm and unhurried. 

Eventually Earl takes the jeep off the roads, driving into the sand wastes. Night Vale becomes a bulbous glow behind them. The headlights cut silently through the night, revealing rocks and sand and occasionally, the shimmery blue-green, glassy and reflective eyes of scared, mute creatures. 

Cecil shifts in his seat. He stretches out his legs or folds himself into contorted positions. He disentangles their hands so he can run cool fingers through Earl’s hair. He leans his head against Earl’s shoulder and sighs, content. He slumps his weight against the far door and watches the desert pass, and his breath fogs the window. 

Earl turns the car off. Cecil’s hand slides into his hair again and tightens into a fist at the back of his skull. Cecil is already tilting forward over the armrest so it’s easy to meet him for a kiss. A quick brushing of lips, chaste, before they press into each other in earnest. Cecil is Cecil, is eager and reaching, scrambling for him. Earl clamps a hand on the back of his neck and holds him steady, guides him until they both settle into a languid, breathless give and take. 

They pull apart, only far enough to share breath. Earl can feel in the lines of Cecil’s body that he’s about to lean back in, start them all over again. Stoke the fires inside of each in them with gentle licks and careless clatters of teeth. He gets close enough for their lips to brush over one another.

“Cecil,” Earl says, and he tightens the grip he maintains on the scruff of Cecil’s neck. Cecil stills, backpedaling so they can look into each other’s eyes. His lips are a little swollen, blushed red where Earl bit at them. 

“Scoutmaster,” Cecil says in mock severity. Earl grins.

“We still have a hike to get through, Scout.” Earl can feel the mood in the car wither, Cecil going practically boneless in his seat out of protest. 

It isn’t far. Earl drove them closer to the main attraction than he would for anyone else, scout or otherwise. This _is_ a gift, after all. Their packs are on their backs and their breath shivers up in white, icy clouds in front of their mouths. The desert crunches under their feet. Earl had brought a jacket, but Cecil’s wearing it. There is no light, no sound, nothing to disturb them in any direction. The air smells sharp and clean, and is bitingly cold against any bare skin.

Earl throws his arm out, horizontal across Cecil’s chest and bringing them to a halt. There’s a row of craggy rocks before them, jutting darkly out of the desert sand. The dead limbs of sleeping trees twine upwards into the air around them. In the summer months, this place is an oasis, but during the winter, it’s a serene graveyard. In the night, the water before them is unnaturally black, as though it is swallowing all light. The only interruption of its smooth surface is the speckling reflection of the stars above. As though as a swathe of the sky had fallen to the earth and now laid longing and still.

“Earl…” Cecil whispers. His voice is rough and he’s shivering. 

“Let’s make camp.” 

They set up quietly. Cecil’s gaze keeps darting over to the calm pool, as though he is afraid to keep his eyes off of it for too long. Their tent goes up, their blankets unfurl. Cecil drifts between the thick trunks of the trees like a shade and returns with tinder. Their bloodstone circle gets arranged in exacting perfection near the fire pit. Earl sneaks up behind Cecil and slips his cold hands under the blond’s jacket, beneath the thin material of his tunic. He strokes upward along the lines of his stomach and nibbles the side of his neck.

They help each other undress. Each newly exposed piece of skin is peppered with bites and pressed with kisses. Earl pulls Cecil’s boots off and nips at the protruding bone of his inner ankle. Cecil unbuttons Earl’s shirt, following his fingers’ movements with a trail of suckling mark that will bloom purple. They spent a while just sitting, chilly fingers running over arms and legs, up the delicate bows and arches of spines. Exploring territories they’ve seen a thousand times or more in careful detail. They kiss, long and lingering. Their limbs slid together, as if they are loath to allow any space to part to them.

“Don’t you want your badge?”

Earl leads them to the edge of the water. Cecil is flushed and his jaw is clenched tight – Earl can tell from the tight cords of tension in his neck. Cecil’s neck, which is sporting fresh imprints of his teeth. Earl goes in first, the pool a freezing shock to his system. He leads Cecil in deeper, two steps until it’s sloshing around their knees, four and it’s up to their waists. Cecil’s teeth are chattering; his skin is prickled with goosebumps. His eyes flicker between staring at the water and staring at the sky. 

Earl takes a backwards step into a deep drop off, the water suddenly diving into the earth. Even Earl isn’t sure how far down it goes – he can’t hold his breath long enough to reach the bottom. Cecil stays resolutely still, his body shaking, but a few gentle tugs and he’s following Earl. They’re both treading water, their heads and shoulders and arms above the surface. The ripples they make, the sounds and splashes – they all die quickly, unnaturally so, as though the disturbances are being soaked up by something. 

They paddle out into the middle of the lake and _here_ , finally, when they glance around, the ground and the sky truly look as one. In the starlight, Cecil’s eyes are wide and terrified, and even through his constant movement, Earl can tell he’s shaking.

He’s so beautiful. Their own reflections don’t appear on the water’s surface.

“What do you think, Cecil?” Something far, far under the water brushes up against their legs and Cecil shudders bodily. 

“I-I’m preeeetty sure that I’ve a-already got the existential dread and terror badge,” Cecil stammers. Whatever deep thing is beneath them briefly drags Cecil under, but he surfaces again in the next instant. 

“You have,” Earl agrees, grinning. “Too bad you can’t earn the same one multiple times.” Cecil shoots him a look like _then why the hell are we here_ , but before he can give voice to his complaints, Earl continues. “Extant Existence – confronting your existential dread!” 

“Your own small, particular space in the cold void,” Cecil says, “and the large, uncaring creations beyond your own existence.” 

The whatever-it-is below them, that they are no doubt disturbing, moves a cumbersome limb and creates a wake effect that bobs them up and down. This is apparently a last straw for Cecil, as he flails and throws himself onto Earl, clinging to the scout leader. This causes them to sink, which causes him to panic more, which further enrages the Thing under the Water, until the water is sloshing and raging in white capped peaks and long, dripping tendrils are lifting out of the surface of the water. 

“Cecil! Cecil!” Earl calls out between spitting out mouthfuls of brackish water. The other boy is still in throes of total terror, churning the water around him with every slap of his arms on its surface. With a growl, Earl shoves Cecil’s head under the water, tangling his fingers in Cecil’s silvery locks. Seconds pass that, for sure, feel longer to Cecil and then Earl drags him up gasping into the air. “Come on, we have to get out of here.” 

Cecil nods dumbly and Earl lets go. They swim back to shore, occasionally being dragged under by strange currents and even stranger creatures. The large tentacles protruding forth from the pool’s center smack noisily against the water, sweeping across it as though it is searching for them. Earl punches at them when they venture too close. 

Cecil reaches the ground first, scrambling on hands and knees through the shallows. Earl manages with a bit more finesse, stumbling after him. The tender skin of Cecil’s palms splits on the sharp rocks and leaves thin streamers of vibrant red in water trailing behind him. They’re both panting by the time they reach the large outcropping marking the edge of the pool. 

It takes a while for Cecil’s breathing to even out again. He keeps shivering for a long time after that, even with Earl’s arm draped over his shoulders and a blanket wrapped tightly around the both of them. They lean their foreheads together. Cecil’s mouth is slack when Earl kisses him the first few times. He seems to come back alive piece by piece, until he’s climbing frantically into Earl’s lap, and even the scout leader’s steady hand can’t calm his pace.

They grind against each other, too far gone for any more finesse. Cecil clings to him and murmurs a litany of pleas. Earl grips his hip tight in one hand, aiming to leave five imprinted bruises, and drags him down harder and harder. The only word Earl can manage is _Cecil_. One of them slips a saliva slicked hand between them, wrapping around both their lengths, jerking up and down and just barely out of time with the desperate pace they’ve cultivated.

They sleep outside of the tent, beneath a wide canopy of stars, limbs wrapped possessively around each other. Earl tells Cecil,

“Happy birthday.”

And cradles this memory close to his chest. A memory that creeps up the back of his throat to haunt him, on nights like now, like _later_ , when he looks out upon the lonely sky and sees it is more void than star, and that everything has drifted further apart.


	4. Chews me up and spits me out, and then walks my ass home

Maybe they had both tried to fight it. Or maybe neither of them had. 

Summer, sweltering and long, had stretched and stretched and stretched. They had lost track of the days. They had spent hours in the scrublands, Cecil’s skin darkening and Earl’s freckling. Cecil had gone one day without a shirt, and Earl had warned him, halfheartedly, about how bad of an idea that was but Cecil had rolled his eyes and said something like _uhh, I think I know what I’m doing?_ in that weird lilting thing he did sometimes and Earl had shrugged. 

The tops of Cecil’s back and chest and all over his shoulders were raw and red and, on their peaks, blistering. He’d teared up when Earl had rubbed salve across his tender skin but made no moves to pull away. Those tears had finally spilled when Earl pressed maybe a little too hard in some places, mesmerized at the slick feel of it. The way the top layer of his skin was so thin and translucent where fluids built up beneath it. He wondered at the kind of pressure Cecil must feel when he dug his thumb into their centers, and then he kissed his friend’s tears away and told Cecil _you’re an idiot._

Cecil hummed, wet and quiet and miserable, in agreement.

They hunted animals. Well, mostly Earl hunted, and Cecil practiced waxing philosophical about everything under the flat, blank eye of the sun. A rock. A bush. A particularly clumped and, in Earl’s opinion, boring mound of dirt. Also in Earl’s opinion, Cecil was already good enough at waxing philosophical. It seemed to be an inborn talent of his, and one that Cecil insisted on practicing almost constantly, for one reason or another.

“It’s for poetry week,” Cecil had told him once, lying sprawled on his couch with his feet in the air and his head dangling upside down, close to the ground.

“It’s for the radio,” Cecil said more often now, and he said _the radio_ like it was a creature to be cooed and awed at and placated. 

“Don’t you ever see it?” Cecil had asked him, in the middle of the night, cold and shaking. His knees were damp from the ground, mud caked onto pieces of him in a patternless array. Asked Earl after waking him up and going on and on about a dark planet lit by no sun, with deep oceans and thick, gnarled forests, and craggy mountain peaks. 

“Uhhh, no?” Earl was pretty sure that wasn’t the right answer. He’d tugged Cecil close and let his friend shiver out the rest of the next to his side, limbs entangled so he knew Cecil couldn’t slip away. Limbs entangled so Cecil knew he wouldn’t be dragged off into the orbit of some lightless, pulsating nothingness. 

“It’s so I can remember,” Cecil said in the desert. The day had ground on and on and on, and now the sky was a murky twilight around them, dry and warm, all violets and dark hues, shadows elongated and dripping into one another. The fire crackled and popped. Grease dripped off the meaty, sinuous carcasses of Earl’s prey and sizzled in the open flame. 

Cecil was sitting on a rock, a blanket he’d brought from home used as a cushion. Earl sat on the hard Earth next to him, resting his head against Cecil’s knee. 

“Just the Important stuff,” Cecil continued. A hand insinuated itself into Earl’s hair, cool fingers and dragging, scraping nails whose movements echoed and radiated down along his spine. “Like how time can be so strange and so constant all at once. At any other point on the long and circuitous timeline, we would not be here. Just an hour or two in either direction - or even a minute, or even a second - we would not be where we are. We would not be _who_ we are. There are so many tiny moments just like this one. Where would we be right now if even a single one of them had gone differently? Who would we be?”

The fire crackled and popped. Grease dripped off the meaty, sinuous carcasses of unnamed animals and Earl leaned forward. He rolled the sticks that speared them so a new aspect of their muscle was exposed to the lick of the flames. He tried to reach that precise char Cecil seemed to like, and that someone had once told him was exceptionally carcinogous. Probably, Cecil was the one who told him that. 

“I’m afraid,” Cecil admitted. It was soft and quiet, like a distant roll of thunder. The mere preemptor to something huge and dark and roiling. Earl considered this fact. He scooted back until his spine rested on the rock once more and then reached up, tugging Cecil down to be level with him. _There’s nothing to be scared of_ , he could say, but he didn’t want to. They both knew there was, objectively, more to fear in the world than there was to take comfort from. 

“Will you tell me? What you’re scared of?”

Cecil told him. Earl didn’t remember most of it. He mostly remembered the smell of smoke and ash, the bitter taste of carbon, the sweeter, salty taste of Cecil’s skin. How it looked, lit by moonlight and the flickers of dying embers. How Cecil looked, when he was a dark silhouette against a darker sky, when his features were soft and blurred by the early morning sun. The smoothness of his skin, with its frequent breaks for puckered scars and long swathes of old, silky burns. The raw patches where he’d fallen recently, the familiar places – his neck, his hips, a particular spot along his ribs – that had him shaking and sighing. Cecil’s hands on him, exploratory and claiming, gripping and digging and biting.

Cecil’s voice, saying his name. Reduced to whimpers, and reduced to broken sentences, and finally, reduced to huffed pants of air, quick and heaving. 

They spent their increasingly short nights curled together, breath ghosting over skin.

“Nothing has to change,” one of them said. Or both of them said. But only ever quietly, hushed and whispered, as though if they spoke softly enough, if no one and no thing overheard, it could come true.


	5. I'd fall for you

It’s one of those days that makes Earl wonder why he decided white curtains were a good idea.

The afternoon sun is streaming through the thin material. Light comes through in thick horizontal stripes from the cheap plastic blinds behind them. Every now and then a stray breeze manages to filter its way to his cracked window, making the fabric float and flutter and fall still again. Hardly enough to stir the air inside, and somehow each curling sweep feels like it makes the room hotter. 

It doesn’t matter. Earl could stay in this stifling room for the rest of his life. 

His summer sheets are satin, he thinks. Some kind of soft, shimmering material that Cecil likes. They shiver and slide across skin, or puddle in many folded piles. Or stick to sweat dampened limbs, dark patches growing on the light blue fabric. Most of his bedding is on the floor. Even in the oppressive heat, his and Cecil’s limbs remain entangled. 

Earl’s watching little beads of perspiration gather on the intern’s sternum. Occasionally, those little droplets tremble. An inhale will, eventually, cause one to go rolling off between the slats of his ribs. Earl dips down and chases a trail with his tongue.

Cecil laughs and squirms and drags him upwards. Soft lips. Sticky, clinging limbs. Cecil’s hands in his hair, fingers clenching, and Earl grimaces because even he can feel how the roots are slick. His own hand worms between Cecil and the mattress and his fingers stroke along the small of his back, dipping into the sloping curve over his spine, bracketed by smooth planes of muscle. Long kisses, during which their tongues don’t meet. All languid motion, parting only to breath. Tugging closer until they are pressed like fresh flowers between the pages of a book.

Palms on his chest, fingers tapping at his shoulders, and Earl withdraws, panting. Their exhalations add heat and humidity to the smothering air. 

“It’s too hot,” Cecil complains. 

Earl takes this into consideration, and responds by slackening all his muscles, flopping firmly and bodily atop his friend. Who responds in turn with an exaggerated _oof_ and flailing arms, choking out half words like he’s in a radio drama. The Scoutmaster noses at Cecil’s temple, then drifts to nuzzle at the crook of his neck. Cecil’s hands flutter along his sides, are less striving to move him, more striving to touch every inch of him. His warm breath tickles in red hair. Radio might come before scouting now, but Cecil manages to shove Earl off. 

Their breathing seems to have synced, quick and truncated movements of their chests. Earl wraps a hand around Cecil’s wrist, feels a bounding pulse thudding under his fingers. A breeze stirs the idle curtains. Turned onto their sides, facing one another, they’re arranged so that Cecil’s back is to the window, filtered light blurring his edges, shadows making his eyes dark. Hardly separate for a minute and Cecil’s leg is insinuating itself between his own again. Guileless, thigh tucked between his, knee crooked and calf hooking. Cecil wiggles his toes against the top of Earl’s foot.

It feels like it happens between blinks. The sun tips over from its zenith. There is a Cecil shaped indent in his bed. His sheets remain rumpled and cooling, spilling over the edges of the mattress. In his living room, Earl is lacing his boots. Cecil is doing something arcane and unknowable to his hair, fingers flicking through the pale locks and wrangling them into a fairly impressive arrangement. Even for as long as they’ve known each other (how long has that been now?), Earl doesn’t know how Cecil manages so well without a mirror. 

“Sooo, scouting,” Cecil says. He says this like it is a finished thought.

“Scouting,” Earl agrees. His bag is already packed by the front door. “I’ll be back.” Cecil sighs and shrugs, and Earl has no idea what he means by any of it.

“Yeah, I know.”

There’s a heavy pause between them that borders on awkward. Earl finishes with his boots and stands, takes a few tentative steps towards Cecil. Cecil’s gaze remains focused forward, downcast – lost in thought. Earl hates this part. This part where the rest of the world creeps in between them. Where responsibilities sully the easy warmth they’ve cultivated, where they’re forced out from the hole they’ve carved for each other.

“I don’t have to leave right now,” Earl offers, even though he really does. But he could delay. Make up some excuse. Or more likely, Cecil could make up some excuse that Earl will only half-remember by the time he has to tell it himself. “I could-”

“I have to get back.” Sharply, cutting. Cecil shaking his head. “To the station, I mean. You know how it is. Interning, right?”

Earl isn’t sure he knows how it is. It’s his turn to sigh and shrug. Cecil finally looks at him, almost apologetic. 

“Right. Interning,” Earl says. There’s a moment where it feels like _them_ again, when Cecil’s hands cup his face. A light kiss pressed to his lips. A moment spent hovering in shared company, paths tangling together. Earl puts his own hands on Cecil’s hips. The intern’s pants are glittery, he notices inanely. Cecil bumps their foreheads, a friendly nudge, and then their paths are separate again. 

“Two weeks?” Cecil has extricated himself completely from Earl. He’s already walking towards the door, steps light and jaunty.

“Two weeks.” Earl feels like an echo, screaming out of a hollow canyon. Cecil stops with his hand on the doorknob, his finger already pricked for the bloodstone offering. Turns back to him with a grin and a wink.

“See you then, Scoutmaster!” 

He doesn’t wait for a confirmation before he’s gone, and Earl is left voiceless. There’s a Cecil shaped hole in his existence. And his palms are coated in glitter.


	6. Keep what we're losing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt for sad/angsty fics: Take your favorite couple and write one (or more) one-shot(s) describing “the first time and the last time” they did something together. Might contain:
> 
> \- the first and the last time they saw each other  
> \- the first and the last time they kissed  
> \- the first and the last word they said to each other

The day is like any other. The sun is hot, the desert sands are audibly sizzling, popping and crackling. And no one wants to be here. Even so, their eyes meet from across the crowd. Earl swallows and raises an eyebrow. Cecil grins, lopsided and toothy, and Earl thinks he might have a few too many incisors.

The last day is like any other. The sun is hot. Outside, the desert sands are probably sizzling, popping and crackling. Cecil doesn’t meet his gaze. A tape recorder sits between them, its red, singular eye solemn and unblinking.

By the time they have met, it’s already a game. Earl doesn’t know who taught Cecil to play. But the boy’s lips hover above his own, catch against the dry and peeling skin of his sunburnt smile. None of it is expected, by either of them. One pinned, the other pinning, and a sudden dipping. A sudden parting. A sudden distance, that neither are equipped to traverse.

By the time they part, it’s not a game. Every touch is weighted. Cecil’s fingers flit over his shoulders, and an iron wrought gate is left in their wake, sinking into his flesh. Earl is the one to drag him back, fingers in hair, jerking in the way that Cecil claims to like. Evidence to the contrary, but he’s not about to tell Cecil what he likes or doesn’t. It’s biting, metallic and robotic. Earl pushes Cecil away, and claims, bitterly, that they could have had something.

Privately, he doesn’t actually believe they could have.

The first word is awkward and scraping, like a boot scuffing coarse ground. Kicking into solid firmament and releasing a loosely contained billow of dust in its wake. If either of them were to guess, what would follow, would either of them tempt even the single syllable? Earl’s booted foot toed at the desert ground and neither of them glanced up to read the winds in the swirls of discarded dust. Instead, Earl says:

“Hi.” And blushes. And squirms. And Cecil laughs.

“Hi.” Answering syllable, dripping with a sardonic border. One of Cecil’s eyebrows raises.

Later, later. It is always later.

“Something.” Earl finishes. We could have had something.

And Cecil laughs.


End file.
